It looks like a World of Warcraft silence penalty is on the horizon as Blizzard readies the pre-expansion patch for Legion. The latest expansion is scheduled to go live on Tuesday, August 30, but the pre-expansion fun will kick off this Tuesday with the newest patch. With the newest patch, the silence penalty will go live as well.
In a blog post on its site, Blizzard mentioned the company’s wish for players to have a positive experience.
“World of Warcraft offers many opportunities to engage with other players in a variety of ways and to help support positive experiences in these engagements…”
With the pre-expansion patch, players who are reported multiple times under the Spam or Abusive Chat categories will be flagged for investigation. If GMs find the player to be guilty of abusive or inappropriate behavior will receive an account-wide silence penalty. With the penalty, players will be banned from certain social aspects of the game. They include:
- Talk in Instance Chat (Raid, Party, and Battlegrounds)
- Talk in global channels that are auto joined (such as General or Trade)
- Create Calendar Invites/Events
- Send in-game mail
- Send Party Invitations
- Send War Game Invitations
- Send Invitations to Duel
- Update a Premade Group Listing
- Create a New List for a Premade Group
But it’s not all doom and gloom as players will still have access to certain chat and party features. Despite being silenced from a lot of WoW’s social features, players will still be able to:
- Whisper to friends (both WoW friends and Battle.net Friends)
- Reply to Whispers from Non-friends
- Party/Raid Chat (with Invited Players)
- Create Parties and Raids
- Talk in Global Channels that have a moderator
- Share Quests
- Sign up for a pre-made group
When a player is silenced for the first time, they’ll receive a 24-hour penalty. The Warcraft silence penalty will then double for each subsequent time thereafter. The kicker here is there is no maximum penalty, so players who find themselves the subject of multiple penalties won’t be able to chat for a very long time. Players who have been silenced will receive a notification when they attempt to send a message to a channel they’ve been restricted from.
Of course, there’s a chance for abuse in the reporting system itself, thus the need for a GM investigation. Regardless, the World of Warcraft silence penalty should hopefully make the WoW social experience a bit more enjoyable. Are you looking forward to the silence penalty? Let us know in the comment section below or on social media.
[button link=”http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/20177160/new-silence-penalty-coming-to-world-of-warcraft-7-12-2016″ icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: World of Warcraft Blog[/button]
